The Fox and the Star
by Stephen Greenwood
Summary: Mulder reads Scully a story.


**THE FOX AND THE STAR**  
 **by Stephen Greenwood**

 **Rating:** G  
 **Spoilers/setting:** Post-IWTB, pre-Revival. I've been deliberately avoiding Revival spoilers since the end of September, so if you haven't please don't spoil me, and please forgive any inconsistencies with known facts.  
 **Disclaimer:** The characters aren't mine; the book mentioned isn't mine. I have nothing.

* * *

He calls her in the middle of the day when he's fairly sure she'll be in her office on her lunch break. She's made a few changes lately but some habits die hard and she continues to eat alone at her desk, the doors closed; that hour is hers and hers alone, barring a medical emergency, but the rules have never applied to him and he knows that, despite everything (because of it), she still can't bring herself to push that red reject button when her cellphone displays his name. It gives him hope and that, he thinks, is what might break him.

"Scully."

"It's me."

"Wimpy Kid!" a young voice screams in his other ear, the one that isn't courting his phone, and he winces as he watches a harried father race after a small boy.

"Mulder, where are you?"

"I'm at a bookstore," he says, picturing the frown on her face. "I saw something that made me think of you. I just wanted to read it to you."

Silence.

"It's short," he adds.

"Mulder, I have records to update and patients to see, and half a sandwich that's glaring at me because it's been sitting here wilting for ten minutes while I provided a telephone consultation. I'm really busy."

"You can eat while I talk. It doesn't bother me."

She sighs, and he catches it even over the Saturday afternoon noise of the bookstore's children's department.

"Fine," she says. "Five minutes."

The chair he's sitting on is made for smaller people, those who sipped from a bottle saying 'Drink Me!' or Lilliputians, and his knees are closer to his ears than his ankles but he reaches around them and opens the book on the table he can't fit his legs under, and begins to read.

He tells her the story of a fox who lives in a dark forest, whose only friend is the star who lights his way and watches over him while he hunts. But one night Star is gone and Fox, scared and alone, has to face the world by himself.

"I wish you could see the drawing, Scully. Fox looks so forlorn; he can't do anything without his partner. He's never had to live without her before. He can't cope without her. He doesn't know who he is if she isn't there."

She's quiet for a moment, and then, "What happens next, Mulder?"

He smiles and recites how Fox gathers his courage and strays from his den, asking the trees and the rabbits and the thorns if they've seen his star, "because even though she's gone he's always thinking of her, Scully," but nobody knows where she is. Just when he's about to quit, he reaches a clearing and looks up and sees the sky is full of stars, and his heart is full of joy.

"He knew that somewhere out there was a star that was his," Mulder reads. "All of Fox's happiness was bound to the flickering light of Star. And so it had always been."

He closes the book.

"You're my Star, Scully," he murmurs.

"Mulder..."

He hears the catch in her voice, forces himself not to say anything.

"Are you sure that's a real book? You didn't just make that up?"

He laughs. "I wish I had. They do say you should write what you know, after all."

Before she can reply he hears someone say her name and then there's a brief conversation he can't make out. He grips the phone a little tighter but it's a poor substitute for her hand and it doesn't, it can't, convince her to stay a bit longer.

"I have to go," she says, and he doesn't think he imagines the tinge of regret on her end of the line, knows he doesn't imagine it on his. "Thank you for reading to me, Mulder. It's a nice story."

"Anytime, Scully. Have a good afternoon."

He pockets his phone and takes his book to the checkout.

* * *

 **Author's note:** The Fox and the Star is by Coralie Bickford-Smith. It recently won the Waterstones Book of the Year award. I fudged the order of some of the lines to better fit my plot, as it were, but otherwise it's described as is. It truly is the most gorgeous book.


End file.
